Zone of Intervention
by Sarapsys
Summary: Lidner never wanted children.


**AN: **Death Note is not mine. No profit being made from this.

This started as a drabble and somehow turned long on me. Hope you like :)

_____

Lidner never wanted children.

Career has always been her priority. There was no time for a family, even before the Kira case took over what slivers of her life were dedicated to something other than working or training, and she doesn't regret it. The only child she's ever raised was her little brother, and it's clear she failed at _that_; her brother was convicted twice on drug charges before coming of age, and was in jail when he was murdered by Kira.

Lidner doesn't like failure.

The only infant she's ever held was her brother's child. Another failure on her part, Lidner assumes, because the child was certainly not planned for, and caused quite a troublesome situation with the girl's family. Lidner knows she would be a lousy mother, but she's pretty sure her dead addict brother's addict ex-girlfriend is not the sterling example of a stable parent either.

Lidner works overtime, and doesn't think about her nephew. She doesn't like thinking about children.

So it's maddening when Rester and Gevanni look to _her _when they're not sure how to handle Near's appalling inability to take care of himself.

"It can't be healthy. He's seventeen or eighteen but he looks twelve. He doesn't eat enough," Gevanni says critically.

"I know," Rester says, taking better care to lower his voice than the younger man. "He asks for food occasionally, but he doesn't eat most of it."

Lidner is sitting apart from the two men, absorbed in a thick stack of files, but it's obvious they're talking to her.

Near is our boss, she thinks. What he eats or doesn't eat is neither our concern nor our responsibility. He's not our child.

More generally, he's not a child at all. Not as Lidner defines one. Near can think in circles and figure eights and octahedrons around the three of them. Yes, he's manipulative like a child, but Lidner has never yet caught him using his soft-rounded baby face to soften wills, nor employing a wheedling tone in his soft, piping voice. Near uses words, and he uses them like meticulously crafted weapons. Knocking objections flat with bludgeons of heartless logic, delicately excising truths and reactions with scalpels of fine-tuned lies, ripping out the hearts of opposing arguments with the force and finesse of a master swordsman. He strong-arms his team into doing whatever he thinks is necessary with a combination of inexorable reason and their own professional pride. No, not a child.

Yet not an adult either. If Near retains anything of childhood, it's his complete dependency on his team. He rarely asks for anything personal except toys, but it isn't because he can take care of it himself. If anything, Lidner thinks, it seemed that he didn't even realize his own needs, was just that unaware. Like a child.

Lidner doesn't like children, but she likes this tangle of child and not-child, adult and not-adult even less. It's unsettling.

"Lidner," Gevanni says pointedly when it becomes clear to the men that she is wrapped up in her own thoughts and not attending to their play-acted conversation.

"What," she snaps with a fierceness that startles both of them, then abruptly stands and stalks off before Gevanni can recover and say whatever it is that he's going say, by which he will really mean that Lidner should do something about Near, because she's female and therefore must have a mothering instinct.

Lidner hasn't spent her entire life fighting tooth and manicured nail to succeed in a man's world just so she can get to the top and still be expected to mother-hen over her weird, stunted boss because she's a woman.

All the same, she's the one who ends up slamming down a bottle of vitamins by Near's elbow the next day.

A slight flickering of his eyelids is the only signal that he is startled by the sudden interruption. His recovery is almost instantaneous, and he stares so icily first at the bottle and then at her through his uncombed bangs (he needs a haircut, she thinks irritably) that Lidner is given to understand he considers this unrequested intervention impertinent.

It occurs to her with stark clarity that Near doesn't want a parent any more than Lidner wants children. He's just as uncomfortable as she is. No one that intelligent can be oblivious to the fact that his all-too-obvious youth and inexperience inevitably undermine his authority, and reminding him of it can only destabilize that authority. An appropriate response is suddenly much easier.

"You're not helping the case if you pass out." Which is true and logical, and that gives Lidner the confidence to return Near's rather resentful glare.

Reason works where concern would have undoubtedly failed. Narrowing his eyes, Near opens the bottle and neatly taps out a vitamin. "I need video recordings of all the news programming that has aired in Japan since Kira became active," he says flatly.

Lidner nods briskly. "Yes, sir." Glad to be back on familiar ground.

Near apparently thinks the same thing, relaxes minutely, and swallows the pill. "Thank you," he says, his attention by all appearances already back on the screen.

She might never have made a good mother, Lidner thinks, but she's a damn good employee.


End file.
